An international team of investigators found that a medicine effective against cancer was also able to activate the “latent” HIV in cells, therefore attacking the HIV infection, says a study released this week in the journal PLOS Pathogen.
The researchers from Denmark, Australia, Norway, Canada and Switzerland conducted the experiment with six patients that had been receiving antiretroviral treatment for 10 years.
They gave the patients three transfusions of Romidepsin, usually prescribed to patients with cancer, resulting in the activation of HIV in five patients, allowing the antiretroviral treatment to more easily target the virus in the blood circulation, while avoiding the suppression of immune functions.
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Treating HIV is a complicated process, as the antiretroviral therapy itself cannot fully eliminate the virus from the body, which can enter the cells DNA and remain “latent” and therefore invisible for several years.
Despite the encouraging progress made with the Romidepsin, one of the study's author told The Conversation that although the results were positive, researchers were by no means close to an HIV cure. “Unless a miracle happens, there’s not going to be a cure for HIV for at least 10 or even 20 years,” said Kersten Koelsch from the Institute Kirby, in Australia.